Retrospective Is Part of Late-Career Resurgence for 94-Year-Old

Decades before Instagram offered users mood filters for smartphone selfies, the 25-year-old artist
Maria Lassnig
was putting the finishing touches on her "Expressive Self-Portrait," only weeks after fleeing the Russian occupation of Vienna for her hometown in Carinthia, Austria.

The 24-by-19-inch oil and charcoal on fiberboard from 1945 depicts a topless Ms. Lassnig in sepia tones with subtle streaks of red, blue and yellow. She wears a chunky necklace and faces the viewer with her chin tilted up and an assertive stare.

ENLARGE

Maria Lassnig in 2009.
EPA

Similar to artworks that prompted a professor at Vienna's Academy of Applied Arts to expel her from his class, accusing her of creating the type of "degenerate" art Hitler reviled, the work is among the 73 in Ms. Lassnig's retrospective, opening Sunday at MoMA PS1. It's part of a late-career resurgence for the 94-year-old artist.

"There is no such thing as having too many feelings," said Ms. Lassnig, who lives in Vienna, of her decision to dedicate most of her seven-decade career to creating hundreds of "body awareness" self-portraits. The term, she said, refers to the idea that a finished image should reflect the subject's emotions as well as outward appearance.

To accomplish this, she employs symbols and unrealistic colors meant to convey moods. Blue, for example, stands for hope, red for hurt. Gold is "a poisonous color," she said.

Ms. Lassnig's penchant for brooding pictures of herself will surely appeal to younger PS1 visitors preoccupied with similar self-portraiture, said curator
Peter Eleey.

Her work isn't maudlin, however—it requires unflinching self-criticism, most recently of an aging body coming to terms with mortality, he added. "There's a strength that her work telegraphs about her."

A 2005 self-portrait, "You or Me," shows a fully nude octogenarian Ms. Lassnig, legs sprawled open, brandishing a pistol at the viewer while holding another against her temple. Ms. Lassnig, who owned a gun at the time, declined to say at whom the work was directed.

Before attracting ire, her works drew admiration at the Vienna academy for their realistic style and muted brown tones. Teachers likened them to works of
Rembrandt,
whom Nazis considered a "non-degenerate" artist. Among these is the PS1 show's earliest self-portrait, from 1942.

After returning to Carinthia, Ms. Lassnig "secluded" herself as she had in Nazi-occupied Vienna, painting abstract works on jute bags used in her stepfather's bakery. Some of those works, which Mr. Eleey said marked a "slight digression" from her body-focused pieces, appear in the show.

ENLARGE

'Expressive Self-Portrait' (1945)
Maria Lassnig

While Ms. Lassnig was an obscure figure for much of her career, in 2013 she won the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale. The raw emotions in her work were for decades considered shocking from a female artist. But commercial factors have also influenced this lack of fame, said her U.S. dealer,
Friedrich Petzel.
He lobbied MoMA to host the show, roughly three-fourths of which comes from Ms. Lassnig's personal collection.

"There's always been a lack of confidence that has accompanied her" in commercial self-promotion, he said. "She doesn't like to sell. She's torn between promoting her work and worrying about her paintings ending up in a warehouse."

Ms. Lassnig's 36-by-48-inch works range from roughly $277,000 to $484,000 on the primary market for recent works, with older works priced around $690,000. Auctions of her work fetch similar prices, a sign that they are readily available through her galleries.

Dreams and personal jokes figure into a few of the works, including one 1961 portrait of Napoleon cavorting with
Brigitte Bardot,
inspired by Ms. Lassnig's years in postwar Paris.

But many of the show's later works reflect on such personal experiences as her mother's death and Ms. Lassnig's decision to remain childless. "Child With Dead Mother," painted in 1965, shows Ms. Lassnig sprawled on the floor next to her mother's corpse. In "Illusion of the Missed Motherhood," from 1998, she sits naked in front of a blank white background, holding an unmoving baby between her legs.

"You can see it in the title. It's quite obvious," she said of the meaning. She bristles when questioned about her decision to remain unmarried. "No one would ever ask a man that," she said.

Ms. Lassnig won't attend the PS1 opening due to health reasons. She is too frail to paint anymore, a restriction she calls "dreadful."

Reflecting on her life and the scope of her work, "I did far too little," she said. "And I would have liked to have been more precise."

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.